The convergence of mobility and collaboration  are a growing reality. And that's the backdrop for Cisco's upgrade of the Unified Communications Manager platform's services and capabilities.
Release 9.0 tackles what Cisco sees as some of the key challenges IT managers are facing as they seek to "collaboration-enable" their employees both in the office and on the go.
"Enterprise IT managers want to address user demands for access to collaborative technologies on a variety of devices," said Thomas Wyatt, vice president and general manager at Cisco. "At the same time, resellers are looking to enable IT managers to maximize the value of existing investments while they transition to next-generation collaboration technologies."
Automation Tools
Cisco UC 9.0 aims to do all of this. A new featured called Extend and Connect works with Jabber to bring any third-party phone into the Cisco UC environment. Cisco is also offering support for fixed mobile convergence to give users with any type of mobile phone access to more desk phone-like features anywhere -- without the need of a smartphone, a data plan, or a mobile client installed on the phone.
On the video front, UC 9.0 promises better bandwidth management via a built-in implementation of Call Admission Control. CAC automatically creates a logical view of the network so the system can dynamically update traffic management across clusters and locations to ensure optimal call quality, even during peak usage periods. Cisco is also offering support for additional video endpoints and a dial by e-mail feature.
"We've relied on Cisco Unified Communications for several years, and this latest version brings several updates that answer pressing business needs. Voice traffic has increased exponentially on our network, especially during peak times when applications are due for enrollment and financial aid," said Nick Ciesinski, network architect at the University of Wisconsin. "Native queuing gives us a way to automate the handling of those spikes in call activity."
Thinking Mobile
The list of upgrades to Cisco's Unified Communications platform goes on and on, from customer collaboration upgrades to enhancements to Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and even licensing improvements. (continued...)
Glen Sykes:
Posted: 2012-06-27 @ 6:43am PT
This should be a landmark release from Cisco. The 'dial by email' is a feature that is in danger of being dramatically underplayed by Cisco judging from its treatment thus far.
This powerful feature further leverages some of the investments Cisco made in Tandberg technology, and essentially allows a CUCM registered device to make calls (either voice or video) to any other organisation via the Internet or managed WAN. It is the beginning of ubiquitous, standards based IP calling between organisations, as opposed to the walled garden approach as seen with services such as Skype.
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